The art of Italian cooking: pasta

Hi, today we begin our school of Italian cooking and begin with pasta.

Why pasta? because pasta is the most known Italian food in the world but it’s necessary to know it very well to cook well it and to taste a fantastic dish!

Penne, Italian short pasta

In Italy we cook pasta daily so it’s simple for the Italians to buy the right pasta and everyone is able to cook a simple pasta dish but we imagine that outside Italy it isn’t so easy.

We think the Italians should  have the same difficulties if they decided to cook pancakes 

Let us tell you something important about pasta.

Italian pasta is divided into dried and fresh pasta.

In Italy dried pasta can be made only from semolina which is produced by grinding kernels of durum wheat. But outside Italy it can be made with other kinds of flour and so pasta can’t be cooked “al dente” or, in other words, slightly firm to the bite. Why is it so important for an Italian to cook pasta “al dente”? because in this way we can pour drained pasta into a pan with the sauce and flavour all the ingredients for few minutes on high heat, stirring. In Italy we call it “pasta ripassata in padella”. It tastes fantastic!

Italian pasta, sauteed in the pan or "pasta ripassata in padella"

How can you recognize if the pasta you’ve bought is of good quality?

- at first the pasta must be golden even after the cooking

- the water in which you’ve cooked the pasta must remain clear

- a small amount of starch is released during cooking

- there’s no need to add oil during cooking time, oil is required only by a low-quality pasta

- you have no need to rinse pasta once cooked,  in other words!

To finish this post … the first suggestion is:

read the pasta ingredients very well!

Pasta may be more expensive but the result will be really fantastic!

Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta